Măsurile restrictive și drepturile omului în timpul pandemiei de COVID-19. O analiză a percepției cetățenilor din România

Abstract

Deliberations on ensuring public health and how to control the transmission of viruses continue in the current context of COVID-19 pandemic and influences a large category of people, public perception, but also government responses. In this article I will endeavor in analyzing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on human rights, specifically in Romania. The objective of the research is an analysis of the people’s perception towards one’s rights limitation so other rights could be preserved. The period of time in which I conducted my analysis revolved around the lockdown period and the post lockdown one, specifically March 2020 to the present. Throughout the analysis I propose to address two issues: the first one is to look on how the people related to the question of having a series of restrictions forced upon them in order for a better management of the pandemic and for a better protection for the right of life of their fellow citizens. The second one revolves around the question if these restrictions, in accordance to what should be acceptable in a democratic society, have a strong juridical basis and do not actually represents a case of discriminatory behavior. The results collected with semi-structured interviews show that a large part of respondents perceive the measures of rights limitation as the smallest bad that may happen, the „necessary bad” to ensure the safety and security of the population, while the other part of the respondents consider the measures abusive and inconsistent with human rights.

Keywords

• human rights
• covid-19 pandemic
• restrictive measures
• perceptions
• public health
• romania